Hobart 2019

[tech37]

Nice game Bart! Clean up the clearing and this game goes to OT. Cornell too physical for Bart on GBs. As mentioned, Bart FOGO excellent as is middie Scott. Bart D will not be the first to struggle vs Cornell Canucks.

Like the new minimalist all white unis too...good camo against the snowbanks surrounding Boswell

[TopShelf585]

Like I said before- we'll have a shooters chance at being in every game and tonight proved it.
I'll take a 3 goal loss to #4 Cornell- Good response from Bart and I'm glad to see Scott back to his old form.

I like the speed at which we are playing at however it exposed us a number of times and cost us in transition goals.
This may be obvious but what has to improve is our defense, SSDM, clearing and unforced turnovers. - what is a little unnerving is that we're averaging 14 GA in first three game. That has to come down.

A win against Gate would really turn some heads. Go Bart!

[wahoomurf]

Why 2 goalies? Sam played well last week. Splitting time the M.O. in 2019? Good effort overall.

[FL-GO]

Statesmen would have won if they had better wing play imo. Defense was bad at times but improved as game went on. Bummer about Gate reschedule. Makes for 3 roadies in like a week.

[Jimmy2Times]

No one likes to hear about moral victories, but I think we just saw one. FOGO is excellent and could use some help from his wings. Goalie play was a problem in the first half, much better in the second. Putting up 16 against a top four or five team is impressive.

Enough with the moral victories are you kidding me! That is an insult and I am sure that every player and coach in the locker room would say the same thing!

That was a game that should have been won and anyone who was in the stands knows it. Our clear game was awful and we turned the ball over way too many times. They outplayed us on the wings and got way too many of the contested ground balls. Who cares how many goals we scored, the only thing that counts is that they scored more than we did.

It is time for them to step up and take it from here. Unfortunately, they have to wait a week as the Colgate game was just pushed back a week and they don't play again until Saturday at Binghampton where for some unknown reason they have had some issues. Beat the crap out of them, then travel to Colgate and take care of business. In looking at their schedule they could very easily be 8-1 going into the Syracuse game and they could also be 2-7 or some variation in between.

What the first 3 have shown us is that there is some real firepower on this team, let's see if they how they bounce back and go forward. But please, enough of the moral victory stuff, that is not how we roll.

[Bartman]

Agree with Jimmy that we cannot settle for losing to any team. I was in the stands and we were out hustled/smarted on the wing and for GBs generally, plus our TOs, were way too many at critical points of the game especially on clears. I am excited for the prospects of the season and the talent depth on the offense and at the X this year. I like the defense when Sam is in goal as he seems to have good command and I am thinking he gives us a better chance against the top competition if he plays the entire game(the stats prove this out after 3 games) .

[FL-GO]

So what do we know about Bingo? 0-2 after a 6 and 1 goal losses to Gate and Lafayette.

BX on the Lafayette game shows they committed 21 turnovers and only made 13-18 clears. No guarantees, but this is a game the Statesmen really need to get a W leading into next Tuesday's rescheduled Gate game.

[Laxgunea]

I wish we had beaten Cornell, but I am okay with the moral victory because the season is a marathon and not a sprint. Frankly, it was a non-league game, early in the season, against our first ranked opponent. We showed that we can put up numbers. And Cornell exposed a few crucially important weaknesses: among other things, we are young and panicky and apt to make dumb mistakes under pressure... especially on clears. Coaching should take care of that, and I expect to see less of it as the season goes on. More worrisome from where I was sitting was close D. If we don't solve the problem of slides, we are sunk when it comes to good offences. Both CJ and Sam played pretty well, but when someone is shooting from 3 feet out there is not much that even the best goalies can do. IMO, it was a winnable game, and if we meet Cornell again this year I like our chances. Now some complaining: anyone else there see the holds on Pedicine at FO? The ref called it once or twice, but it should have been called more often. Agree with those who are looking for better wing play, but I thought Sam Mueller did a great job when he was out there. And the best news? Different high scorers in each game. Take away Holdent, and there is Knox; take him away, and there is Scott. And Mott, and Archer. I bet Simas hits a stride soon. And Aslanian tuns out to be a Cam Stone level play maker.
Binghamton will be a good chance to work on close D in a game situation. Rumor is that Gate may either be moved inside to the Carrier Dome because of cold and snow, or postponed yet another week. Back to the moral victory idea: I'll take a deeper run into the NCAA over a single non-league victory against Cornell or SU any day. The team will show who it is by what it learns from the loss.

[Farfromgeneva]

Frustrating start. Not shocking. We always play like trash in Vestal, Binghamton always plays dirty (what’s up Alex Love, Derek Akner and Bobby Datillo who were all brutalized like a POW by them) and they always have shady refs and others. Liked that 5 seconds dropping after the ball was done rolling out of bounds. We knew they’d grind it out and try to evade the entire spirit of having a shot clock.

Despite all of this, shooting has been off wildly. 5 goals on 32 shots and less than half on goal (15). D missed a couple of clear but the bigger problem is then throwing it away on long passes and d middies not coming back to the when the ball carrier is double or triple teamed. Pedicine is 8/11 and the d only gave up 1 goal in the last 20 min w Sam L playing fairly well (doing the Zonino, too many body blocks for rebound possibilities) and the only second quarter goal being a fluke tipped by our guy. Balhandling, geound balls and offense are killing us today.

It’s OOC and not any historical rival or top team so easy to say who cares but we’ve so diluted the schedule with the conference change and a few tweaks this year that this is the sort of game that can define a season and in March where we’ve had some awfulness stretches over the Raymond period like losing to Bingo than catching 2-3 weak effort blowouts before getting to conference. If this team wants to have a good season they have to come out firing and pull away in the second half. Otherwise my expectation will move from conference championship and maybe 10-12 wins to 7-7, 8-6 and a first round NEC playoff loss which would be incredibly disappointing.

[Farfromgeneva]

There we go.

[Laxgunea]

Watch Jake Drennen.

[Laxgunea]

Love Raymond putting in new guys at the end. Agree with FarfromGeneva about technical points, but to me the biggest issue in the first half was the old problem of letting Binghamton set the pace. What I loved was that we took the tempo back and dictated our own game. THat broke the floodgates. Yes, there was carelessness and there were turnovers, but once the stopped playing tentatively, the shots went in. Not a bad result at all. Glad Colgate is postponed. Should be a nice turnout in CT.

[Bartman]

I love the way they came out in the second half. Looking forward to attending the Vermont game in New Canaan. Team looks like it will be ready for the start of league action against Wagner in 2 weeks after a tough OOC game, and hopefully another win against Vermont next week. Happy so far with the season, but still room for improvement on TOs and Clears, defense has been steadily improving...glad to see Sam starting in goal , he made a difference today...a happy and hopeful Statesmen supporter for the season we have been yearning for

[Ketch]

This was the first time I’d seen this year’s edition of the Statesmen play. In the first half we played Bing ball- not a good thing. I’ve seen them give us plenty of problem in the past with their style of play. On top of that we weren’t shooting very well and ran into some staunch goalie play. For the game Bing had 23 saves. The second half was all Hobart. I’ve never seen us share the ball like that before. The maestro out there is definitely Chris Aslanian. What a leader. The defense is a work in progress, but I think we’ve found our starting goalie in Lucchesi. He was really solid and made some spectacular saves. Bing tried to lay the wood to us in the second half as well. Really late hit on Archer and also a questionable one on Knox at the other end of the field. Fortunately both guys popped back up and seemed to be ok. Without looking at the stats I’d say we did a good job with our playmaking on the EMO, so we made them pay for their transgressions. Pedicine absolutely owned the X. The only problem I see developing is that teams are really going to start working on shutting him off. Worked quite well at times today. The Cornell coach was very complimentary before our game with them on how well we were playing in the middle of the field. Looked pretty sloppy to me at times today. Problem with the poles carrying the ball too far into the attacking zone among other things. All in all I’m very excited about this team- both the depth and the talent of the depth. A win against a good Vermont team would be huge. As far as the schedule is concerned, you can only beat the teams that are on it. We’ve taken care of business so far, although it would have been nice to have that W against Cornell.

[Farfromgeneva]

Ketch at what point after almost 20yrs of Binghamton guys taint dirty shots and numerous unecessary injuries to or players can we either drop them from the schedule or get some remedy out of them? This problem has run through stephenson, Nelson and now McKeon. At this point we have 8 NYS teams on the schedule (incl Wagner in conference) with 2, maybe 3 being in the top 1/3 of DI. Even if we’re going to stick with the softer schedule they’ve earned their way off ours. I mean seriously, they’re worse than the worst or the UMass teams because they do it often when their in a lost cause game situation vs consistently all the time.

The goal Aslanian scored on the interior pass from Mott was pretty special. Mott has been playing great but Ive noticed he occasionally rifles a pass like aaron Rogers throwing his hardest on a couple of yard screen or short slant and this pass was a high laser but aslanian jumped/stretched (on video) to grab the bullet handled it and dunked it in perfectly.

Simas will get there I think. He looks like he belongs even if the shooting and ballhandling has room for improvement. Kind of reminds me of VDBK.

Here’s an interesting statistical comparison. Different schedules and rosters which aren’t being accounted for but before today, Archer had played 17 games (14 in 18, 3 through Friday of this season) which is what Aslanian played in his FR year. Here’s the lines through the first 17 games for each:

Aslanian (2016): 24g, 13a, 37pts. 89 shots, .270, .506 , 16gb, 33 TO & 5CT

Archer (2018 + 1st 3 2019): 25g, 16a, 41pts. 86 shots, .291, .616, 16gb, 20TO & 4CT

No commentary just interesting comparison.

[Jimmy2Times]

First half was a little sketchy and I agree, we played Bingo Ball and that is never good. Sam in goal was a major difference and would think he only gets better as the season goes on. Loved the way they came out in the second half and took it to them. This team has weapons and when they move the ball they look very dangerous. Silly Turnovers are still an issue and need to be cleaned up as we play better teams. Looking forward to Saturday and the game down in Connecticut, looks like it is going to be really cold but looking forward to the trip down there. Game at New Canaan HS reminds me of the old days playing in day of champions on Long Island, Ct a little closer trip.

[Farfromgeneva]

Anyone think Hirsch was a better D coordinator than turri who got a huge bump from having Waldron at Binghamton? Delphi is 2x NJCAA DPOY and Mueller is good enough to start on most programs. Throw in AAs Dan Ryan and EBF and this D should be way, way better

[manyhats]

10 - 7 lead at the half. Will the boys close this one out, 4 - 1 will be a great start.

[Laxgunea]

O slowed to get Aslanian his point to take over from Veltman on all-time list. Plus Vt goalie made 18 saves ... some standing on his head. Big takeaway for me is offensive groundballs ...s hows a super hungry team. Wingp play on faceoffs also shaping up. It was pretty cool to see Pedicine struggle, and then to figure the other guy out.
Our D is not bad -- it is hot and cold. Seems to come out playing really soft, and then adjusts as the game goes on. The goals from the doorstep of the crease are terrible. Those were the difference in the Cornell game. Great goalless stretches against Bingo and Vermont. I just want to see 4 full quarters of D (goalies excluded ... they've been great).
It's been a good warm-up season. Wagner will be a good NEC start, and Colgate is now well scheduled over the spring break. Hoefully the weather warms too.

[Bartman]

Beautiful day for the game in New Caanan, Laxgunea makes very good observations. It felt like Sam made more saves than he actually did , so Defense was good at times when they settled down...Vermont Defense looked very good to start and their FOGO was confusing MP, but everyone adjusted and it was a great effort. The third quarter had a stretch where it looked like it was raining Hobart goals....Congrats to Aslanian. Looking forward to start of the NEC season on Saturday and a tough OOC contest against Colgate. GOBART